Has anyone heard of this. The story concerns an expedition despatched from Earth fifty years hence with a mission to save the sun which is dying. However, there has been a previous expedition lauched several years earlier which went missing without trace. When the astronaunts find the missing spacecraft near the sun strange incidents start to happen.

"Sunshine" is produced and directed by Andrew Macdonald and Danny Boyle of "Trainspotting" (and no matter what you think it still ranks as one of the great British films) and "28 Days Later". The script is by Alex Garland who worked with them on "The Beach" and "28 Days Later" The cast includes Cillian Murphy (also from "28 Days Later"), Hiroyuki Sanda, Michelle Yeoh and Rose Byrne. While part of the finance has come from America it is a British production; filmed at Three Mills Studios in London, and while there apprantly elements of "2001." "Solaris" and "Alien" the film is also said to contain philosopical and metaphysical aspects as well. The production has also aimed for a near-documentary approach with the mission financed by both China and America for example.

Anyone inerested in this?. It'll certainly get me back to the cinema after having sat through "Ice Age 2". And I'm certainly not going to stomach "Becoming Jane."

IMPORTANT: IF YOU HAVE NOT SEEN "SUNSHINE" DO NOT READ THIS ENTRY UNTIL AFTER YOU'VE SEEN THE FILM. THANKS

Since "Trainspotting" quite a few people have tried to write off Danny Boyle as "not having achieved greatness"(?) Whatever you think his filmography is turning out to be interesting, and Boyle could instead rank as one of British cinema's storytellers like Carol Reed and Roy Ward Baker.

"Sunshine" reunites Boyle with Alex Garland who wrote the menacing and unpredictable "28 Days Later". It is a brooding sci-fi thriller, and what I liked most was the emphasis on character. The crew of "Icarus II" are flawed and vunerable which makes them more realistic than the cliched, macho NASA types or heroic "Star Trek" figures. It adds to the tension as to whether any of them will survive. I didn't like the fact that the actors all had to speak with American accents - a concession to the American market which has been a bane to the British film industry. Having the international cast of one Australian, one New Zealand, two American, one Irish, one Japanese, one Malyalan and two British use their own accents would have helped emphasis the clash of personalities and also the indivduality as I sometimes couldn't tell which was which.

Cillian Murphy as the phyisict Capa gave the best performance. He made you care for the character and left you wondering whether he would surivive. He's the only person who takes positive action where the others dither or are swept away by events, and remains the calm centre in the turmoil. An example being where on board "Icarus I" where Mace angrily demands he get out of the single, remaining spacesuit. Capa looks calmly at him and says nothing. Michelle Yeoh, away from her martial arts roles, is also practical and give' s her role of Corazon, the botanist, elegance too. Her death is shocking as well as haunting: murdered as she holds a bud that has sprouted in the devastated oxygen garden. Also haunting is of her pressed against an airlock and sobbing as the garden is destroyed by fire. Rose Byrne as the pilot Cassie lets her humanity show in the scenes where she turns away weeping after Captain Kaneda is killed, and after refusing to vote over whether Trey should be killed askes Mace to be as kind as possible towards him. Trey however has done the job for them. Chris Evans as the engineer Mace is all macho bluster, but does little to back up his claims that he should be captain until the end when he sacrifices his life repairing the computers by repeatly diving into the freezing coolant tanks. After Trey's suicide, Mace blames Capa for having diverted the mission leading to a mordant joke where Corazon says they should conserve their oxygen as she walks past the two fighting men. Coming in towards the end of the film is Mark Strong as the deranged Captain Pinbacker from the first Icarus mission. It's not stated whether the pressures of the mission or exposure to the sun have driven him mad, but I liked the way he was never shown properly on the screen. The impression you got was of a loomng figure with red, blistered skin.

Comparisons have made with "Alien" with the dimly-lit interiors and the scenes where Capa and the others explore the derelict Icarus I. I liked the idea of dust all over the ship, and the understated comment that it consists of decomposed humans. A lot of scenes had an eerie feel to them from the discovery of the overgrown oxygen garden on Icarus I, Harvey's frozen body floating off into space, Trey's body discovered in the holographic bay: his blood staining the white walls to Searle continually exposing himself the intense sunlight. The finale was apocalyptic with only Capa and Cassie left to deal with Pinbacker in the bomb chamber which is almost expressionistic with it's endless arena of grey slabs though the hand-held, overlaid shots while adding the the frantic energy also made it confusing. It was also haunting with the flashing lights of the chain reaction merging into the raging flames of the sun which reaches out to embrace Capa after the darkness of the ship.

Whatever the film's flaws -and I've mentioned one or two - it was very brave of Boyle, Garland, producer Andrew Macdonald and their crew to have attempted a film like this when British films either consist of gangster dramas or unfunny comedies. "Sunshine" is also more in keeping with the British sc-fi that empahisis restrain, ideas and character rather than the flash Hollywood blockbuster.

Last edited by morrisvan on Sun Apr 15, 2007 6:49 pm, edited 1 time in total.

The way they deal with spoilers over on CBR is simple. The background is white, unlike the dark red hear. You write SPOILERS: in black font. and then following that you write your review or whatever with the spoiler bits in. when finished you change the font coulour of everything after the word spoilers to white and it becomes invisible. After that you write END OF SPOILERS in black font again. Then anyone who looks at it highlights inbetween the spoiler tags with the cursor, (like as though you were going to copy it) and it turns black so you can see it and read.

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